act of finding something significant is never
completed or the significance found is never per-
manent. Since the first line does not make up a
complete sentence, it could also be read in the form
of a question about what will satisfy the mind’s
poem. The title and the first line read together
announce the connection between finding signifi-
cance in the world and modern poetry, which is the
focus of the entire poem.
In the second line, a distinction is drawn
between the act of the mind searching in the past
and in the present. In the past, the mind has not
always had to find what will satisfy it because it
relied on conventional forms of poetry already
determined to be appropriate. These conventional
forms are represented in the poem by a theatrical
script and scene that are read and played over and
over again. The suggestion that the poem of the
mind is searching for something new relates to the
title, which focuses on modern rather than an ear-
lier form of poetry. The wordmoderncould refer to
modernism, a literary movement that reached its
height in the United States during the 1920s.Mod-
erncould also mean contemporary in this instance.
The fifth line starts more than half way across
the page, announcing an important break. The
speaker states that at one point the conventions
that guided the mind’s search for significance
were changed, but by using the wordtheater,
with its accompanying scenes and scripts, he
suggests that new conventions were established.
Yet he does not dismiss the old completely, saving
it as a souvenir.
The new way for the mind’s poem to find
significance, which is announced in the seventh
line, is for it to interact with real experience in the
moment. The creative mind has to be open to its
surroundings, to speech, and to men and women
who are living in the present. It also has to engage
with the political as noted when the speaker insists
that the mind must find significance in the face of
war. The speaker is most likely referring to World
WarIIsincethepoemwaswrittenin1942,one
year after the United States entered the war.
At the end of the tenth line, the speaker
returns to theatrical metaphors, insisting that the
mind’s process of creation necessitates construct-
ing a new stage and that the mind, which is the
creator of the poem, must be an actor on that
stage. The mind/actor repeats words to itself as it
constructs the modern poem. Here the speaker
introduces the third element in the process, the
reader, who though invisible, is listening to the
actor speaking. During this process, the poem’s
audience becomes one with the poet and the poem.
In the closing lines of the middle section, the
speaker describes how the mind/actor forges this
link between him or her and the audience. The
poet first becomes a metaphysician, someone
who explores the fundamental nature of reality,
searching for significance in the shadows, and
then a musician playing a stringed instrument
that helps stir the audience’s imagination, thus
forging a sympathetic connection between the two.
The final section of the poem, indicated
again not by a new stanza but by an indentation,
reiterates the connection that the modern poem
must make with the living: with a man skating
and with woman dancing and one combing her
hair. This connection will provide the poet and
the audience with the satisfaction they desire.Themes
The Power of the Imagination
In ‘‘Of Modern Poetry,’’ Stevens insists that the
poet’s dilemma is finding what will provide a
sense of satisfaction in the modern world and
that only through the power of the imagination
will this dilemma be resolved. The first line
announces the important role the imaginationMEDIA
ADAPTATIONS Wallace Stevens: Voice of a Poet, a full length
compact disk, was released in April 2002, by
Random House. Stevens reads selections from
his Pulitzer Prize-winning book,The Collected
Poems of Wallace Stevens(1954).
Wallace Stevens Reads: The Idea of Order at
Key West, Looking Across the Fields and
Watching Birds Fly, and Other Poems,
released by Harper Collins in 1993, is an
audio cassette collection of poems read by
Stevens.Of Modern Poetry